While it's not like we're hunting Viet Cong supply columns in triple canopy jungle, or even Serbian tanks and artillery among the forested slopes of the Balkans, we're still trying to knock out a stockpile of mobile cruise missile and drone launch vehicles that are sometimes as small and mobile as a pickup. The Houthis have been stockpiling these over the course of years of shipments, mostly from Iran, and even our most confident estimates were that the initial round of airstrikes only degraded their total missile and drone capability by twenty to thirty percent.
Fortunately that corner of the Arabian peninsula is the armpit of the world and largely devoid of natural overhead cover. At the same time, this isn't like the jump-off of Desert Storm or Iraqi Freedom, where we've been spending a month or more developing targeting data for a mammoth airstrike package. This one is largely happening on the fly.
The Houthis are eager for the shoot 'em up, as you'd expect from a bunch of dudes with "Death to America" right on their flag.
Despite efforts to deter them, the Houthis have refused to back down, vowing to retaliate and welcoming the prospect of war with the United States with open delight.Thing is, we have no intention (or desire) to fight the Houthis in Yemen. We're all regime-changed-out over here. The Yemenis are just going to have to sort out their problems on their own.
“Yemen is not an easy military opponent that can be subdued quickly,” Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior Houthi official, said in a post on the social media platform X after the American-led strikes.
We're just going to hang back and blow up anything the Houthis have that can be used to attack shipping. Of course, this also requires interdicting incoming replacement armaments, and we need to do that, too.
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